Is agriculture back in the game?

I think that supple leather would be better for say swords where the base critical is higher than bows and you get the added Vital Points skill.

 

And for poles and bludgeon as well, but even on bows don't forget that the influence of base weapon damage was turned down a bit in the damage calculation a couple(ish) years ago. Even with their very low strength modifier many bow builds can boost their DPS swapping some dex for strength.

Vital Points is of course a powerful skill for any swordsman, regardless of gear. I did run dual daggers in supple but because of Vital Points you're again in the position of needing supple less, since that skill is already pushing you further into diminishing returns, and you have the option of sylvan weapons with elven hilts. The power boost is clearer to see in non-dagger builds.

Supple coupled with Bec de Faucon though, that is something to behold. Throw in dual Sylvan-Savage and then scrounge up as much strength as you can in the leather; Evasion is powerful enough that one might even consider Brittle Brawn. Very fun build.

 

As laid out when Supple was nerfed, armor crit bonuses and spell effects were moved to "Extrinsic bonuses" where Dex, weapon base, skills and weapon bonuses were moved to "Intrinsic bonuses", the final calculation was supposed to be (1 + Extrinsic) × Intrinsic = Total crit chance, but that was years ago now.

Edit, as an example, this made it so someone with +50% on their armor and +20% base + weapon would have a (1 + 0.5) × 0.2 = 30% chance instead of 70% chance.

 

Right, so if I have 5% crit from my weapon and 8.8% from Armor Weak Points (lvl 140) then that 50% gear bonus would amount to +6.9% actual crit bonus. Also, I believe that the bonus from supple leather is actually closer to 20%.

 

That's total bonus from armor, supple leather gave somewhere between 25% and 30%, iirc, but if you burnt enough gold, silver and time, you could get up near 70% on armor. Chris cited folks hitting 100% crit rate as the original reason for the nerf.

 

I just made a full set of supple leather armor and the total weapon critical chance bonus is 8%. There are no masterworks that give weapon critical chance. There is a single enchantment that gives 5% "critical bonus at night" if you have a lunaism gem socketed.

[edit] 8.4% with a supple belt.

 

I'm talking about the original bonuses. I think the supple chest armor alone was around 13% back then.

 

With the right combination you can currently get 11.4% max (full set including belt).